Tooth restoration, in particular full mouth restoration (i.e. the replacement of all natural teeth by artificial teeth or a denture), is still a time-consuming procedure. According to the conventional procedure, a cast impression of a patient's mandible and/or maxilla has to be made, processed and used for the design and manufacture of a final restoration comprising customized artificial teeth. In said process, the mouth cavity is inspected visually, and according to this visual inspection the locations for implants are selected. Said procedure is complex and dependent on the skills of the persons involved in said procedure.
In particular in the case where a full mouth restoration is needed, e.g. because no natural teeth have remained or the remaining natural teeth are in bad state and need replacement, there is the additional problem of the lack of any reference point in the mouth cavity from which artificial teeth can be designed. Thus, a full mouth restoration either by providing a removable full denture prosthesis or by providing an implant supported prosthesis (where the prosthesis is fixed to implants previously provided in the jaw bones) is still a challenging task.
In recent years, efforts have been made to make individual steps of the entire process of providing tooth restoration more efficient by using modern technology.
In DE 10 2011 084 111 A1, the operation of an articulator (an appliance used for determining the bite of a person, in particular an edentulous person) is supported by a computer by providing position markers on the upper and lower portion of the articulator and determining their correct position with respect to each other.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,153,135 B1, a disposable denture is provided by laser scanning the oral cavity of a person and creating the denture by stereolithography. However, said method involves the utilization of previously obtained information on the person's oral cavity with remaining teeth in it as a reference point.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,474,932 B1, the use of computer-aided design (CAD) for generating a virtual 3D model of a dental prosthesis from information collected with a 3D camera is described.
In WO 2010/059692 A2, a method for producing a diagnostic model is described wherein data are collected from an intraoral scan of a person's mouth cavity, said dated are used for providing both a virtual dental model and a dental master model, said dental master model is provided with radiopaque linkable parts, and further information is gathered from both the virtual dental model and the dental master model. The collected information is combined for manufacturing a diagnostic model. The method is provided for diagnostic planning and not suitable for providing a final restoration.
There is still a need for an efficient method for tooth restoration, in particular implant-supported tooth restoration, which is speedy, economically efficient and accurate.